


this may be the night that my dreams might let me know (all the stars are closer)

by MarcellaBianca



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Feels, Especially since Winston Duke and Sebastian Stan are clearly in love, Falling In Love, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Romantic Angst, Soft M'Baku (Marvel), because there needs to be more M'Bucky endgame, just at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-25 15:04:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14979713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcellaBianca/pseuds/MarcellaBianca
Summary: His appearance in Birnam Zana - coming out of the Woods of Solitude, it seems - isn’t a surprise to M’Baku in the least. He has heard tell of him. “Shuri has taken a white boy under her wing,” his second informs him.M’Baku snorts. “Better her than us, eh?”But now, seeing the white boy in question, M’Baku thinks...he looks at home, here.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to do something with M'Baku since the release of Black Panther. And then when the Infinity War press tour came and they paired Winston Duke with Sebastian Stan (and Mackie), I knew - I KNEW - I had to write something for M'Baku and Bucky. M'Bucky. Yesss.
> 
> I haven't seen a lot of this pairing in the fandom, at least not with M'Bucky as the endgame, so I figured to be the change you wish to see in the world. 
> 
> Thank you to Brenda and Steph for shepherding me through this process as well as BlyssfulStorm for beta-ing it for me and making sure I was doing the voice of a man like M'Baku justice.

He notices the quiet, taller man with skin like tired marble the third time he makes the trip from Jabariland. 

M’Baku is walking down the sacred pathways, head held tall even amongst the whispering and stares. Let them look. Let them look away. He has power they cannot fathom, even with their use of a child. 

(Shuri. Her name is Shuri. Now that M’Baku is on the council, he should probably remember that. Even though her laughing eyes and sarcastic voice sometimes makes him wish she were locked up in her lab more often.)

He knows he’s still quite a sight to see in the city, in his ruling finery - once, he notices a little girl with eyes like saucers reach out arms like spiders to him before being reprimanded by her mother. 

He waits until the mother turns her back, and then his eyes find little wide ones. She giggles when he winks.

With a small, secret smile, he leaves her be and turns just in time to see the man watching him quietly, while little ones wander up to him and ask to play with him. He wears a shuka to cover his missing arm; the other arm, well-muscled and lean, is tanned from his time in the Wakandan sun.

His appearance in Birnam Zana - coming out of the Woods of Solitude, it seems - isn’t a surprise to M’Baku in the least. He has heard tell of him. “Shuri has taken a white boy under her wing,” his second informs him. 

M’Baku snorts. “Better her than us, eh?”

But now, seeing the white boy in question, M’Baku thinks... _ he looks at home, here. _

 

* * *

 

He almost doesn’t see him at first. 

The wolf is sitting still while little ones play around him, peppering him with questions, calling him that name. It sticks to M’Baku like sweet tree sap. 

One of the little ones climbs into the wolf’s lap and tries to braid that long, wavy hair, reaching out her hands like she’s grabbing the last piece of bread from the table. 

The wolf smiles. It’s faint, but it’s genuine. 

He’s still missing an arm, but he doesn’t look as if he misses it. On the contrary, there’s a relief to his face M’Baku wasn’t expecting, not after everything he’s now heard about the ‘broken white boy’  the Princess had to put back together. Word of this man spread to Jabariland; Hanuman is wise and has many ears in many places. 

The wolf looks up, catches his eye. M’Baku never looks away, not from anything. So he looks. It’s not a challenge; M’Baku may be a warrior, one of the strongest Wakanda has ever known, but he knows when a battle isn’t necessary.

This is a question.

Blue-silver eyes flick away. 

An answer.

M’Baku walks on.

 

* * *

 

The third time, M’Baku sees him walking with Shuri down a pathway to a small lake. Shuri is talking to him in low, warm tones, spiced with a little bit of humor. The man remains silent, and M’Baku wonders, not for the first time, what has happened to this man to make the hollows of his face so deep, his eyes so still.

He’s about to keep walking when something Shuri says makes a smile spill open across the wolf’s face. His face grows sunny, ghee in a shallow pan, a promise of things to come.

Something, low and soft, stirs in M’Baku’s gut. The flapping of butterfly wings.

 

* * *

The fourth time, the wolf wears a green and yellow shuka. Perhaps it’s something the River Tribe gave him. Nakia always has a soft spot for those who are suffering. It sets off something in his eyes, making them look more cerulean than grey-blue. M’Baku is so busy looking he doesn’t exactly hear what the wolf says.

“What?” he asks, somewhat brusque.

The wolf takes a step back, hunching into himself. M’Baku curses at himself for frightening him. This man has been through enough. He knows himself, knows he can cut an imposing figure to those who don’t know him. That can be a tremendous boon - he still giggles to himself when he thinks about how badly he scared that colonizer who asked him for help to bring back T’Challa - but for every show of strength, there must also be softness. Hanuman is a god of many faces, and M’Baku must reflect that.

“I apologize,” he says, holding up his hands to show he means no harm. “What did you say?”

“I was asking where you go.” The wolf straightens back up. He doesn’t lean to his side to compensate for the missing arm. It’s like he’s grown accustomed the new balance. M’Baku wonders what it would be like to have that one arm touch him, wrap around him, take hold of him. He feels, for a fleeting moment, that it would be enough. 

“I go home to my people,” he replies, and walks quickly in the opposite direction, if only to get rid of those eyes.

 

* * *

 

“You’re from the Jabari. You helped the King.”

M’Baku turns from his afternoon walk back to the path that leads him home, and meets the man’s eyes. He has a new arm, gifted to him by T’Challa; in anticipation of coming battles, no doubt. M’Baku wonders, briefly, what the man would look like with an arm crafted from sacred Jabari wood instead of vibranium. He would have made it with his own hands, taken it to the sacred temple to be blessed by Hanuman himself. 

“I helped Wakanda. Everything else was secondary to saving our people.” He straightens up to full height, meeting the man’s gaze full on. The man’s hair is tied back in a bun, and his arms hang loosely, innocently, at his sides. The new arm is laced with gold, a touch M’Baku finds ostentatious and classless, but it shines in the afternoon fading light and it matches the shades of gold in the man’s dark, wavy hair. M’Baku knows Shuri’s work, knows despite her youth she is a gifted spirit, and the plates are seamless and smooth. 

He wonders if they would feel the same under his hand. Seamless and smooth.

“I hear you’re being helped by the Princess,” he says, in lieu of saying anything that might incriminate him.

The man doesn’t respond for a moment, choosing to look away over the lands to the sinking sun, then down to his arm. “I don’t deserve it, but I am grateful for it all the same.”

“You should be grateful,” M’Baku retorts, although it’s more gentle than he would have done if it were someone else. “The Princess is young - immature - but she is gifted.” He grinds it out like a toothache. He still has reservations about someone so young being responsible for Wakanda’s technological advances.

“She’s done more for me than anybody back home would even offer,” the man says quietly. He’s dressed in cool tones today, green and blue. It brings out the tones of his eyes, silver-white. M’Baku is reminded of home, frosted wind whipping across his face, the smell of snow. Not cold in the way that bites, but a beautiful, specific almost-warmth.

He sees that almost-warmth in the man’s face now.

“You are Sergeant Barnes,” he says. 

The man’s posture shifts, as if someone is pinching him between the shoulder blades. “Please...call me Bucky.”

“...Bucky?” 

Hanuman help us, the man smiles, a snowy sunrise. “Don’t ask,” he murmurs, and turns on his heel to walk back down the path towards the village. Shuri, no doubt, is waiting for him there.

When M’Baku returns to his lands, he sees the man’s eyes in the snowdrifts, in the spaces between his dreams.

Bucky. 

His name is Bucky.

 

* * *

 

“Your accent is different,” the man - Bucky - says to him one day. They are sitting in the fields next to Bucky’s hut, food between them that M’Baku brought down from the mountain: millet cooked with shallots, sweet potatoes, black beans. He also picks baobab fruit for them to share. It makes M’Baku hide a smile in his arm when Bucky’s face puckers up at the taste. “You suck on it, like a candy?” he asks, and M’Baku nods, filled with delight at seeing this man try new things, open himself up to newness again.

“We do not speak the same dialect as the Panther tribe.” He keeps his eyes on the horizon, but he can feel Bucky’s gaze. Intense, curious, but with a sweetness that feels both utterly strange and achingly familiar. “We have different words for things.

“For example,” he says, not sure why he’s going on but he feels a rope under his rib, compelling him, pulling him forward, “the children call you  _ ngcuka,  _ for ‘wolf’, correct?”

He looks over at Bucky, meeting his gaze. Bucky nods. “Yeah.”

“In Jabari, we would call you  _ ikooko.” _

Bucky smiles. “‘ _ Ikooko, _ ’” he murmurs. It rolls on his tongue like sweat down a neck. M’Baku snaps his gaze away to the sunset and shoves a piece of baobab into his mouth.

 

* * *

 

It’s still strange to be making so much contact with the other tribes. Some of his people comment on it. 

“Ah, Great Gorilla,” they sigh when he announces plans to return to the Golden City and meet with the Panther. “You go too far, perhaps.” 

At first, their doubts lanced into him with the strength of a spear, but now it’s dulled to an ache. He can get used to it. 

He notices Bucky’s soft gazes in his direction the next time he comes down the mountainside, and slightly fails in his attempt to not puff out his chest. 

 

* * *

 

“What is it like up there? Where you go?"

M’Baku, in spite of himself, offers a smile. “Jabariland. The most beautiful place in all of the world.”

Bucky’s eyes go far away, but in a blink he’s back, and he smiles back, tentatively. “I would like to see it someday.”

M’Baku can see the moment when Bucky regrets what he said, and before he can respond, Bucky’s turned and is walking very quickly down the path back to the village.

“You are welcome to,” he says, in spite of his better demons.

Bucky stops.

 

* * *

 

“We do not use vibranium,” M’Baku says, pulling open the doors that lead to his rooms. “We have no use for it.”

He gestures to the space, wood and pelts and warmth. “We have all we could ask for from our skills and our way of life, and from Hanuman.”

Bucky stands in the center of the room, not quite comfortable but not entirely tense. His hair is up in a twist this evening. “The children...they wanted to do it for me,” he confesses to M’Baku; a bolt of warmth floods M’Baku at the visual this conjures.

 

* * *

They talk. He discovers Bucky’s first name is James. He rolls it around in his mouth. It conjures faiths alien to his own. He wonders if James is religious at all. Wonders if he knows of the goddess Bast and the truths of this land. Before he can ask, Bucky runs his fingers along the side of the wooden panels of his bedframe and asks M’Baku to tell him the story of Hanuman. 

“He is…” M’Baku can’t stop watching Bucky’s flesh fingers, callused and beautiful, as they move across the frame. “He is the one who gave us our sacred wood. When the other tribes pledged their devotion to Bashenga, the first Black Panther, we did not. We hold fast to the old ways, the ways of old. We must remain independent.”

“But you still help the King,” Bucky says softly. His hand is still on the bedframe, but it’s slipping over the mattress itself, caressing the furs like he would the small of a lover’s back.

“I help the King because I know now that to help when aid is needed is to help Wakanda herself. I think that is as noble a cause as any.” M’Baku has never felt his furs to be too warm, but now he’s burning alive.

Bucky lets out a small, chuffing laugh, and lets go of the bed. He moves, with the liquid kind of grace that such a nickname as White Wolf would require, to stand in front of M’Baku. “A noble cause. I remember when I fought for those.”

“You are fighting for your own mind,” M’Baku rejoins. “That is the most noble cause of all.”

“Be careful,” Bucky whispers, the hand that was on the bed coming up to stroke across one of M’Baku’s forearms, dancing just lightly on the points of his gauntlet. “Sometimes the fight doesn’t go too well.”

“Which is when you call for aid,” M’Baku responds, and something in his voice must do the trick, for Bucky tilts his body forward, pressing their foreheads together.

“Is that noble?” Bucky breathes, his body bowing towards M'Baku in a way that makes the gut of M'Baku roar. 

“The most noble.” 

This time, M’Baku is the one who moves, tilting Bucky away so he can kiss him.

 

* * *

 

M’Baku doesn’t know how long it takes for both of them to fall onto the bed, fall into each other. He just knows that suddenly, Bucky is astride him, hands hesitating until M’Baku sits up and shows him how to undo the leather straps, how to loosen the furs, until the complicated network of ties and laces falls away and he sits bare-chested. Bucky looks at him like he looked at the newly risen Wakandan sun, and why wouldn’t he? There is strength in every part of M’Baku, and he has seen lovers look at him like this before. Something about this time, though, compels him to feel a flush of something more. 

He closes his eyes at the touch of Bucky’s hands, then his mouth, then his tongue, a single point of fire on his skin. A growl escapes him when Bucky gently closes his teeth around the pebbled skin of his nipple, and he chances it; he spreads his hands through the thick silk of Bucky’s hair, gently pulls. The sound Bucky makes sends a bolt of power through M’Baku. He feels like he’s walking into war, but there was never a battle so sweet. 

 

* * *

When Bucky slips the shuka over his head to reveal his body, M’Baku presses his mouth to every bit of bare skin he can reach. Bucky writhes, calls out to his Christian god; M’Baku stops his lips from speaking, pressing a hand over that full-lipped mouth. Then, wet heat envelops two of his fingers, and he looks up to see Bucky taking them down to the second knuckle.

 

* * *

Bucky is riding him, slow, taking M’Baku’s cock so deep. M’Baku wonders if this is how a man could truly lose his mind. His hands are running all over Bucky’s chest, worshiping those scars that connect flesh to vibranium, the silver threads of skin that have knit together to form the man above him.

Bucky bends down to kiss him again, both flesh and metal hand on either side of M’Baku’s head. M’Baku cants his hips up. Bucky swears in Russian. It sounds like metal grinding against each other, but it’s elegant, too.

M’Baku wants to make him swear in every language he knows.

 

* * *

 

_ “M _ _ o nifẹ rẹ.” _

“I don’t speak Jabari, remember?” Bucky murmurs against his mouth.

“That’s the point  _ ikooko _ ,” M’Baku scrapes out before pulling Bucky close, rolling them so Bucky’s back hits the furs. He kisses Bucky hard and hot as his hips pump into all of that tight heat. The moan that comes from Bucky is deep and primal. Something wrenches inside M’Baku’s guts.

Glory to Hanuman.

 

* * *

He never tells Bucky what he said, that first night they lay together amidst the roaring of the mountain winds and the warmth of their bodies covered in furs.

When M’Baku finds out that Bucky disappeared in the aftermath of the snap, he walks back to the mountain, alone, and not for the first time, he has regret.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to.

He goes to see Shuri. There’s no other choice, no other course.

She sits dumbstruck and quiet in the wreckage of her lab. The times M’Baku has met the Princess, silence was never an option. She is youth and joyful fire. It is enough to drive anyone mad; M’Baku has at times wished for something, anything, to stopper it. But now he knows the hollow of quiet, gaping grief. Grief for all they have lost. For all turned to ash.

They sit in that quiet, in that grief. They don’t speak. What use could words be? Instead, M’Baku waits until she sleeps and sends prayers, asking Hanuman to bless her dreams, to make them peaceful, if they must come at all.

When he returns to his mountain, he has no time for his own mourning, for his own wishes, for the man with the eyes like rivers off the snow slopes. He must work with the outsiders, to find a solution, to bring them all back.

His own wants, his own loves, those don’t matter right now. They can’t.

 

* * *

 

The man in the suit that looks like a bug says they can use other realms, other passages of time and space, to stop Thanos before he even procures all the stones. A reversal of course, he says. 

M’Baku stays behind in Wakanda, along with the Princess and Okoye. He works as an assistant, a protector, although he’d be making a grave mistake to say that aloud, especially to the leader of the Dora Milaje. He throws himself into the work. The people, the people who are left, need this.

When he brings this up to Shuri, she watches him, doe-like eyes too perceptive for M’Baku’s liking. “They need it, or you need it?” 

He stays silent.

When he sleeps, if he sleeps, he hopes it’s dreamless. Damn Killmonger for destroying the sacred herbs. What M’Baku wouldn’t give to visit the land of his ancestors, to see if those who disappeared are truly gone to the other side, or if they are locked in one of the Stones, the way the Captain thinks, or if they are in another realm altogether, like the bug man argues.

(“Man, I’m Ant-Man. I mean - I don’t want to correct you, because you could probably snap my neck with your toe, but I just think it sounds better.”

“You are still a bug, Bug Man.”)

He wishes, if he could see his people in that realm or in another realm beyond that one, that a man with impossible-colored eyes and a full lipped, sweet smile is there, too.

 

* * *

 

The others begin to return.

He waits. A lion in a cage.

 

* * *

 

Indescribable joy shoots through M’Baku at the sight of his people regenerating from the ash. They look slightly lost, as if they’ve been newly born. M’Baku works tirelessly to reacclimate them to this realm - the world itself has not lost any time, but the changes are clear in their bodies. 

M’Baku has a duty to protect the people of this land, to help them. 

He’s so busy with his own people, the pain of missing lessens by the day. Every morning there are new arrivals to welcome back, to heal. 

It is sunrise off the steppes. M’Baku sits at his desk, still getting used to being back here, to the absurd new ‘normal.’ T’Challa’s return signalled to him that he needed to go back to Jabariland. The Golden City had their king again. 

So he returned, to the side of his great mountain. The sunrise throws purple and pink onto the snow banks. 

When the doors push open, he’s fixing a nail on the side of his chair, making a note to get it fully repaired.

“Don’t you have someone to do that for you?”

It is a voice that rolls through the air like unfurled silk, covering the land and M’Baku’s spine in delicious, heavy weight. 

James -  _ Bucky  _ \- looks the same as he did the day he vanished. Earlier that day, the day of ash, M’Baku had come to Bucky’s hut. They had shared one final touch, one final kiss, before the battle had commenced, and then that was it. M’Baku had wondered what they would have said if there had been more time.

He’s up out of his throne and across the room, cupping Bucky’s face in his palms. Not kissing him, not just yet. Just looking at him. Checking him for any sign of harm. 

Bucky covers his hands with his own, and takes in a deep breath like he’s home. “ _ M _ _ o nifẹ rẹ,”  _ he murmurs.

M’Baku goes tense. “I thought you didn’t speak Jabari,” he scrapes out.

“I’m a liar,” Bucky smirks.

It snaps a string on the tether M’Baku has on himself. He kisses Bucky, tremulously, and holds on.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys I love this pairing? So much? 
> 
> Thanks to Brenda for yelling at me to have a happy ending for these fools.

**Author's Note:**

> On the Marvel wiki page, it states that Yoruba is used for the Jabari and Xhosa is the main language for the Tribes in the Golden City. Therefore, the words used by M'Baku are Yoruba, and the words Bucky knows are Xhosa since he's been hanging with Shuri and the Panther Tribe.
> 
> Mo nifẹ rẹ means “I love you” in Yoruba. 
> 
> The food Bucky and M’Baku eat together is similar to the diet eaten by the Dogon. one of the African peoples the Jabari were based on for the film. 
> 
> Baobab is a dry fruit (like coconut) that you suck on. It is said to taste like a really sour mango or watermelon.
> 
> A shuka is a cloth worn by the Maasai people - that cloth covering Bucky's body up on top to hide his missing arm is a shuka.
> 
> Title from "All the Stars" by Kendrick Lamar ft. SZA.
> 
> There is probably going to be a second chapter. Because I can't let this shit go.


End file.
